Towering above his competition at 6-foot-5 and weighing in at a sturdy 240 pounds, University of Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen has all the physical tools that NFL scouts dream about when envisioning a perfect quarterback prospect. He can launch the ball at a blazing 66 miles per hour (six miles per hours faster than the current NFL Combine record), and as you can see in the video above, can hit his targets with pinpoint accuracy when dialed in.
Allen seems like a safe bet to go in the first round. Despite the certainty surrounding his draft day projection, he’s rarely seemed comfortable in his own skin on a football field for such a highly touted talent. While other quarterback prospects like Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen and Sam Darnold have enjoyed success leading their teams to victory against the best competition Division I football has to offer, Allen has often struggled as the centerpiece of a somewhat run of the mill team.
It would be unfair to punish Allen’s draft stock just because he played for a small school in a weaker conference. After all, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, and Joe Flacco competed for schools outside of the Power Five conferences and still managed to enjoy incredible success at the next level.
However, Allen’s 44 passing touchdowns and 56.2 career completion percentage while under center for the Cowboys don’t even come close to measuring up to the numbers his small school NFL predecessors achieved. Not only does he lack the statistics to back up his case for a first-round selection, but Wyoming’s modest success this season had more to do with their ninth-ranked defense than their 105th ranked Allen led offense.
Many NFL coaches truly believe they can rein in Allen’s loose cannon while squeezing every last ounce of talent from his arm, but why pass up on proven prospects to take a player who rarely excelled against lesser college adversaries? Of course, we won’t know how well he’ll perform until he sets foot on an NFL field, but at the moment he looks closer to being the next Blake Bortles than the next Carson Wentz.
It’s not that Bortles is terrible, it’s just hard to win in the NFL when you're constantly adapting your playbook to mask the flaws and inconsistencies of your franchise quarterback. The Jacksonville Jaguars would likely hesitate to admit their frustrations with Bortles' limitations, but if you offered them a better option at quarterback, I bet they’d start talking.
The 2018 NFL Draft is loaded with talented gunslingers and Josh Allen isn't even the best QB in his own class. Why risk the future of your franchise by betting on an unknown commodity?
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